The adult part taking care of the child part

So, is this what is happening? You had a not good enough parent. You find a not good enough t. This t also had a not good enough parent, and doesnt know how to be one. Now you are trying to make him be one, just as you did with your original parent. Permanent impasse. Their only tactic is for you to realize the futility of getting blood from a stone.

Why not find a t who knows how to be a good enough parent? Personally, i found it easier to distinguish the difference when a t started treating me like a human person. Nobody ever really had before.

People will let you be just as weird as you want to be, and not necessarily call you out on it. Or you dont hear it, just as your parent didnt hear you. Your world just shrinks without you realizing it.

At first I didn't really like the T who became my "good enough" parent figure. I thought she was smart and nice enough, but I didn't feel strong parental yearnings for her for a year or more. The way things were between us felt too stable and too alien for the attachment-y parts to really go to town. Before this T, that strong attachment thing was more likely to happen in situations where I couldn't quite get my needs met or I was never exactly sure if I was good enough. So sometimes I think it pays to be cautious when your child part gets really attached to somebody who says they can't help you. Maybe it's a sign you're repeating old patterns?

I need to correct everyone on this. My current T I crawled back to does Ego State. My x-T did IFS. I only said manager part because that is how it fits and feels in my mind.

[QUOTE=Elio;6924897] Oh and regards to your statement of "he is willing to try and help in the modality he is trained in so either I accept that or not. If I accept then I have to show up to session willing to do my best and try." Did you ask him what having you try or doing your best looks like to him?/QUOTE]

I only had that one session with him to actually talk about the torture I have been in for the past few months because of my transference to him. My first working session is this Thursday.

Is he not a good enough T? Did he not have good enough parents? I do not think that is true. Why would you think that is true?

Maybe I am playing out repetition compulsion. Expecting a therapist to play parent when that will never be possible for a therapist to do as they should not be doing that anyway. So I am asking the impossible.

Yes Repetition compulsion it is called. I think you are right so how does that revelation get used to resolve the issue?

Right. So your t wants you to make a RATIONAL decision based on that realization.

This is not a math class! Its about feelings! Where does he get off asking you to do algebra in therapy? If you wanted that, you could go to community college.

You know how they say, its like explaining color to a blind person? We are the blind person, and they are NOT doing a very good job of explaining color. They have no concept of our world. ALL of our decisions are ALREADY rational - THATS THE PROBLEM. They are flat black. He is saying, leave it flat black. You are saying you want more. He is saying, there ISNT any more. Hes a liar. Eta - okay thats kinda harsh! But to me it felt like a box.

Eta - your parent was your only choice. Your t is NOT your only choice.

Well, I'm not entirely sure. For me, it was about building relationships with people who maybe didn't feel so familiar and "right" right away but who I could see rationally were good people. (I remember my first reaction to my now-wife is that she seemed really boring.) So in terms of therapy, maybe that would mean finding a therapist who seems well-trained and dedicated and experienced with developmental trauma but who doesn't inspire the intense transference right away. My experience is that those feelings will likely come around eventually with the new person and then you might have a better shot at resolving them. So you'll have the urge to repeat the attachment experience but the target of your feelings might be different this time and thus better able to help you through them. But unfortunately there are no guarantees with this kind of thing.

No, I got that, which is why I wondered what your current T does when you talk IFS like lingo to describe your inner world.

Who is he to put it into the box he likes? It's your inner world. Shouldn't you get to enjoy it however it feels. You might get to where you feel only those 3 parts/states. You might never get there, and (this is my opinion) both of you have to be ok with how your inner world feels organized to you at any given time. The simple fact that it doesn't feel that it is simply Adult, Parent, Child now, is important to explore and not with the agenda of pushing your inner world into that definition of a mind/psyche but because it is your inner world that needs to be explored and expressed as it is now and as it changes and grows. (again, my opinion)

I don't think you are asking the impossible. However, the possible might not look exactly the way you thought it should when you ask for it. Makes me think of little caesars pizza - the square pizza with square slices - that I really loved.

My T doesn't subscribe to this statement and I am glad for it. She believes she can be 'as if' in her responses to me. Or maybe it's that she believes that her responses have the ability to touch the parts of me that needed that stuff as if she was my parent; thereby providing me with an experience of receiving something. There's still boundaries and I've been told no. I don't get every fantasy that I want and I've had to learn to ... or try to deal with that. Still learning.

Well my appointment is tomorrow. I have managed not to email him between session because I have BetterHelp T I message twice a day and and we agree he responds in the morning and evening so that helps with venting, being heard and getting attention.

Well we did not do much of anything except discuss the transference more and him explaining what he thinks is going on and he still feels that once I can transfer the transference back on to myself by my adult part taking care of the child part then it will resolve. We are to do this by taking me back in to trauma memories and in that moment have my adult part rush in and save and nurture the abused child part.

Oh barf......all so hokey.

I hope he is able to be of guidance on how to have the adult part help and be patient enough to go at your pace.

I completely agree with his concept of once your adult part can take care of the child part then this type of transference will start to resolve. I have my concerns about his method. And with comments of barf and hokey, I feel you have your own reservations of this method.

Are you going to keep your better health person for a while?

Yes I am with betterhelp T. He is helping me process sessions and help me through the week between sessions not to seek attention from EMDR T. BetterHelp T said T’s approach was, “This makes sense to me as it is likely the etiology of the attachment issues. Whether or not it will be effective remains to be seen though. I suppose we can only trust in his judgement and hope for the best.”

Well I have to wait another week and sit here and try to manage this awful transference.

I guess I feel it's kind of heartless that he expects your adult self to do this alone? My T and I do imagery rescripting of abuse memories except she also steps in as an ally to my adult self. Initially it was all her since my adult part had no idea what to do!

Having your T not even willing to be there in the scene to help protect your child part feels really cold to me.

I talked to BetterHelp T about how I would like a transitional object from my T. He said:

"As far as the helpfulness of a transitional object, I suppose it could prove to be useful in order to bridge the gap between his presence and your life outside of session. I could also see it serving to just perpetuate your attachment to him though. It could serve as yet another reminder of him that strengthens the attachment."

He is probably right.

Reference: I feed lots of Raccoons and their cubs on my porch. Don't judge me.

In session yesterday T tried to make analogies to help me see that I know how to take care of my child part.

He was using the Raccoons as symbolism's or references to show me I do know how to take care of my child part. He ask. "If you saw one of the large males beating up one of your cubs what would you do?". "When you stepped onto the deck to clean up and one of the cubs was still on the railing and it was crying like a puppy because it was scared what did you do?". "Is it the cubs fault it is getting beat up? Is it the cubs fault that it could not climb down fast enough to follow its mother? If the cubs make a mess of the deck do you wait until they return and yell at them viciously and beat the up or do you just clean it up because that is what cubs do?" It was ways for him to show me that I already know how to nurture a child and I can do it for myself when in the memory. It is to show me I was a just a child and not to blame for doing normal annoying things that children do and should not have been abused for it. Apparently I blame my child parts for the abuse and for the trouble it causes me in adult life and I want nothing to do with it. In other words I lack compassion for myself. I understand what he is saying but I do not feel what he is saying.

What is your transference feeling like when you say you have to manage it? You say awful which sound more a result of the transference feelings. For example, at many times my transference felt like a longing or a deep ache which left me feeling miserable and anxious. I never really have been able to say what I longed for or ached for; there didn't/doesn't seem words for it. Sometimes there would be images of wanted actions and so on.

How does it change from moment to moment?

How does it move through the week? When if ever do you get angry about it, get angry at your T because of ... something specific or something unnameable?

Dealing with and working with transference of any kind is hard. It is courageous of you to want to work through yours, to understand it, and to grow through it. You've been here long enough to know that if not handled well can create more problems. I'm glad you are keeping the better help T around for a bit.

Is your ego state T... an EMDR T? If yes, did you start to see him as an EMDR T and developed the transference or ?? Does he plan on using EMDR with you at all? If not, have you brought up the idea of using EMDR to deal with the trauma rather than visualization?

Girlfriend that is a lot fo questions!

So I described it as feeling like my self worth was tied to him. Feeling of being nothing, empty, worthless along with the longing to be loved by him and taken care of by him like a child. When not with him I feel like I have been kicked out of my home and not wanted until the next session. Like I just do not want to exist if he is not in my life.

All day I think of ways I can make him proud of me. I am modeling what he did with his business. He had professional pictures done and a brand new website. So I am having a photo shoot in two weeks for pictures for my website and hired someone to update my website. It will be good for my business and it will show him my best adult self did something mature.

I never really felt any anger. Fleeting it was when I wanted him to fail at his practice and die. He does EMDR and Ego state. Combination of both. I can not pin point exactly when the transference became a problem. Yes he wants to go back to doing EMDR going back into the same memory we worked on for months and I felt we never got anywhere with it.